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Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

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Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people are under the impression that public schools are a disaster in this country unless you're in a high performing school district. Either buy an expensive house or try to make enough money to send your kids to private school. So, no, public schools are not okay here, regardless of your view on this law.

It is designed that way. Instead of taking property tax money, pooling it, then evenly dividing it across a state. The way most states are designed is that property tax is given to the local school district, meaning that areas with cheaper homes get less money than areas with more expensive homes. This is made worse by demographic problems associated with poverty which makes teaching poor kids more expensive than ric…

The money's a very small part of the problem. Failing schools have huge piles of money thrown at them all the time, and it doesn't help like one might think it would if that were the main problem.

Actually fixing US schools amounts to "fix (or significantly mitigate) the US poverty-cycle problem", unfortunately. Unfortunate because if just funding poor schools like rich schools (Nb sometimes those funding levels are the opposite of what you'd expect, though—there are state and federal programs to funnel money to really, really bad schools) then it'd be straightforward and (relatively!) cheap to fix. The actual causes are more complex and would require far more "political will", as they say, plus a lot more money, to fix.

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#352
post #115

Context as to what's happening in US schools... This highlights part of the growing movement and disagreement around culture shaping through kids. To highlight this, if you take a look at school of educations mission statement[1] > Through commitment to innovation, social justice, excellence in teaching and research, and partnerships, the School of Teacher Education will position itself as a national leader in shapin…

>Other schools [2] in the US are more explicit on change...

?> School of Education devoted to developing civically engaged children, youth, and adults for a diverse and inclusive society.

Why is developing "civic engagement" among our population a bad thing?

Why is a "diverse and inclusive" society a bad thing?

Not being snarky here, I just really don't understand how reducing civic engagement and excluding those who are "different" are good things.

Perhaps you could explain your reasoning around that?

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#353

If anybody thinks this is a good idea, I'm looking forward to reading your opinions.

I can make a charitable case for it. It's mandatory state/public education, so the curriculum is legislated and kids are forced to be there, and to start, we have a captive audience. The subject legislation was in response to some arguably extreme cases where there is a concerted effort to distribute lgbtq pornography to kids as a way to use critical theories to shift social norms around sexuality, but uniquely using…

Is this what a charitable case looks like? It sounds like a regurgitation of a conspiratorial fantasy. I'd hate to see what the uncharitable case looks like.

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

equally dystopian agenda? One side is removing all books that aren't on a whitelist.

Am I mistaken in understanding that this “White list” is actually a large collection of white lists, and each district’s librarians curate their district’s list?

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Florida already has the worst teacher shortage in the nation This isn't new. Florida teacher shortage has existed for a long time. It's because Florida doesn't pay their teachers. This isn't likely to change anytime soon because Republicans have had a stranglehold on Florida since 1999, and they are notoriously anti-education.

Florida has a booming economy. Maybe they want to preserve that over becoming "educated" like San Francisco?

What’s the definition of a booming economy? Florida’s GDP per capita is much closer to Vermont than California; the real GDP growth rate for Florida, while high, is also lower than California. [1]. Though of course with a large population the overall GDP for Florida is high.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_terr...

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is designed that way. Instead of taking property tax money, pooling it, then evenly dividing it across a state. The way most states are designed is that property tax is given to the local school district, meaning that areas with cheaper homes get less money than areas with more expensive homes. This is made worse by demographic problems associated with poverty which makes teaching poor kids more expensive than ric…

The money's a very small part of the problem. Failing schools have huge piles of money thrown at them all the time, and it doesn't help like one might think it would if that were the main problem. Actually fixing US schools amounts to "fix (or significantly mitigate) the US poverty-cycle problem", unfortunately. Unfortunate because if just funding poor schools like rich schools (Nb sometimes those funding levels are…

> The money's a very small part of the problem. Failing schools have huge piles of money thrown at them all the time, and it doesn't help like one might think it would if that were the main problem.

I disagree. When poorer areas have worse student:teacher ratios while paying teachers less, and giving them the most challenging students, it is absolutely about the money.

Even if teachers are willing to take on a bigger challenge, we're also asking them to take a pay cut to do so which isn't reasonable.

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also drives families with kids out of Florida to more sane educational operating environments. Florida already has the worst teacher shortage in the nation: https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2023/01/22/our-child...

Umm, there's a teacher shortage because everyone's moving to Florida. They had the largest population growth in 2022.

[deleted]

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#358
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Back in my day…” there was a crusade against Christian prayer and what not. Keep things neutral - to the point that teachers who were otherwise obviously religious would completely dodge the topic when my intellectually curious atheist self asked on topics. Now we’re back at teachers here-and-they’re wanting to assert their belief system in the classroom and activist parents seeking to eliminate this issue… only the…

> So, the question becomes should we keep schools neutral or not? What is the role of school? Is the role to prep kids to go to college? Is it to drive social change? Is it to teach what kids need to perform common jobs? Is it to teach kids how to have skills to operate as adults (like managing their personal finances)? These are questions we don't agree on as a culture. A bunch of debate is rooted in disagreement as…

"What is the role of school?"

There are really only two possible answers in the current public school systenlm:

1. Whatever a broad consensus of people want them to do.

2. Whatever a slim majority can impose on the rest.

As consensus evaporates, we are left with the latter. This plays out in red/blue states differently.

Eventually, we may need to move to a voucher system so that the parents just pick a school that they like.

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#360
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the government doesn't have the assent of the people is it not illegitimate? I thought the whole presumption under our system was the representatives have the assent of the majority.

I still remember that in 2010, the approval rating of US Congress was 10%, and yet 90% of incumbents was reelected. How the hell is that possible?

"Congressional approval rating" is a dumb and misleading stat and I hate that it's reported on so much, especially in contexts like comparing to to e.g. the President's approval rating.

Maybe you love your representative and Senator(s) but your party is in the minority. So, you don't approve of Congress.

Maybe ditto on the liking your reps, but Congress is always doing really stupid shit even when your side's in charge (like the goddamn own-goal "debt ceiling" bullshit) simply because they can't rally enough support to make that junk stop, so you don't approve of Congress. Or maybe your side controls both houses and the Presidency but still can't do jack-shit because of Senate rules, or because some other Senator or two (not yours) in your preferred party like playing both sides to advance their state's interests at the expense of everyone else—so you don't approve of Congress.

Maybe you like your reps and your side is in charge but you've really taken anti-politician stand-up jokes to heart, or follow media that highlights and exaggerates all the stuff you hate about reps on the "other side" even when yours is in charge, so you tick the "disapprove" box.

And so on.

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